What's the story behind law schools that are ABA-accredited, but not given a ranking by USNWR? Are the schools withholding information that US News would need in order to rank them, or does US News just lump them all into 'unranked' out of a sense of mercy?

Rank Not Published means that U.S. News did calculate a numerical ranking for that school/program, but decided for editorial reasons that since the school/program ranked below the U.S. News cutoff that U.S. News would not publish the ranking for that school/program.

U.S. News will supply schools/programs listed as Rank Not Published with their numerical rankings, if they submit a request following the procedures listed in the Information for School Officials.

Schools/programs marked as Rank Not Published are listed alphabetically. Rank Not Published is for the schools that are in the bottom 25 percent of the rankings in business, education, engineering, law, and medicine and schools/programs in peer assessment only rankings with scores of less than 2.0.

Unranked means that U.S. News did not calculate a numerical ranking for that school or program. The school or program did not supply U.S. News with enough key statistical data to be numerically ranked by U.S. News. Schools or programs marked as Unranked are listed alphabetically and are listed below those marked as Rank Not Published.

A school's numerical rank tells you how many schools garner a higher score on the U.S. News ranking model. Schools that have the same score are listed alphabetically.

For example, suppose that a single school scores higher than all others on the U.S. News ranking model. It then has Rank 1. Now suppose that three schools are tied with the second-highest score. Each of those three schools will have Rank 2. Then the next-highest-scoring school will have Rank 5.

The fifth-ranked school achieves a third-highest score, but because of the three-way tie among schools achieving the second-highest score, there are four schools that rank higher, so the third-highest-scoring school has Rank 5, not Rank 3. In this example, no school has a rank of 3 or 4.

ScottRiqui wrote:What's the story behind law schools that are ABA-accredited, but not given a ranking by USNWR? Are the schools withholding information that US News would need in order to rank them, or does US News just lump them all into 'unranked' out of a sense of mercy?

There are national schools and then there are strong regional schools. If a school is not a national school and not the number one school in the region, do not attend. It is as simple as that. Some garbage school that charges outrageous tuition in a saturated market is not better than a strong regional school despite the fact it has a "higher ranking" or whatever.

I assume they are for working professionals that just need the license for X,Y, and Z purposes. I hope...

For example, I know someone who has a terrific business in referral work, but is getting fucked out of money because you need an attorney middleman. He literally just needs to get a J.D. and sit for the bar.

ScottRiqui wrote:What's the story behind law schools that are ABA-accredited, but not given a ranking by USNWR? Are the schools withholding information that US News would need in order to rank them, or does US News just lump them all into 'unranked' out of a sense of mercy?

It's pointless to rank so many schools when there's little difference between them and rankings can shift so suddenly YOY. No reason to be mean like that. Then again, USNWR rankings are basically pointless anyway.